Month: March 2012

Yesterday, Coalition for the Homeless joined Council Members, advocates, and service providers on the steps of City Hall to call for restoration of over $5 million in proposed budget cuts to services for formerly homeless individuals living with HIV and AIDS. This essential pot of money was left out of the Mayor’s preliminary budget proposal, but in the coming months, the Mayor’s office and the City Council will be negotiating a final City budget. In addition to these immediate funds, we called for humane, cost-effective solutions to the problem of record homelessness.

“Record numbers of homeless children and adults are crowding New York City’s shelter system, and Mayor Bloomberg’s budget plan and flawed policies will only make this terrible situation worse,” said Mary Brosnahan, Executive Director of Coalition for the Homeless. “The Mayor should sign on to the forward-thinking, fiscally-prudent plan advanced by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and General Welfare Committee Chair Annabel Palma. This plan would help thousands of homeless families move from shelters to permanent housing by targeting Federal housing resources, would reduce the homeless shelter population, and it would save New York taxpayers millions of dollars in shelter expenses. We hope Mayor Bloomberg will finally stop wasting taxpayer money on policies that have exacerbated the homelessness crisis and instead work with the City Council to include their smart, cost-effective plan in the FY 2013 budget.”

Following the press conference on the steps, the City Council held a hearing on the Department of Homeless Services’ proposed budget for next year. In his testimony, DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond admitted that the City had never bothered to estimate the cost to taxpayers of cutting off access to federally-financed housing programs like Section 8 vouchers and NYCHA vacancies – decisions that have directly contributed to record levels of homelessness.

We will continue to work with the City Council and pressure the Mayoral administration to enact these proven-effective policies.

The NYC Independent Budget Office estimates that Mayor Bloomberg has under-budgeted $76 million for shelters next year in the face of rising homelessness and the Mayor’s refusal to provide housing assistance for homeless families – on the same day that administration officials admitted at an oversight hearing that they never did their own analysis.

The Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is likely to face budget challenges in 2012 and even tougher choices in 2013. With a growing census and longer lengths of stay in the city’s homeless shelters, costs are going up, and – in the case of family shelter – these costs appear likely to exceed what the city has budgeted for this year and next. Additionally, the lack of a new program or policy to replace the Advantage rental subsidy program that ended last year may further increase costs, especially for family shelters.

…

Based on IBO’s estimates of shelter costs, this suggests that family shelter could cost about $37.0 million more this year than budgeted (about $12.0 million of which would be city funds) and as much as $76.0 million more in fiscal year 2013 (about $24.0 million in city funds) given the increasing length of stay, higher census, and lack of a replacement for the Advantage program.

As we’ve noted many times, the Bloomberg administration is now spending much more in New York taxpayer dollars on the shelter system – where it costs $36,000/year to shelter a homeless family – because of the Mayor’s refusal to resume priority referrals of homeless shelter residents to proven Federal housing programs. Indeed, as we noted in our State of the Homeless report from last year, the Mayor’s failed experiment with flawed, time-limited rent subsidies like the Advantage program has already cast taxpayers more than $370 million in avoidable shelter costs – and has caused incalculable hardship to homeless kids and adults.

But astoundingly, in a New York City Council preliminary budget hearing today, Bloomberg administration officials admitted that they’ve NEVER conducted a cost analysis of the consequences of denying homeless families Federal housing assistance.

In the face of smart and pointed questioning by City Councilmember Brad Lander, NYC Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond reluctantly admitted that the City had never conducted a cost-savings analysis of this major policy shift – the sort of fiscal analysis that the Bloomberg administration routinely demands of policy proposals that it opposes, like living-wage legislation.

Diamond also, incredibly, feigned ignorance about the application process for the key Federal housing programs, public housing and Section 8 rental vouchers. At first he claimed that those programs were “not available” to homeless people. Then, again under pointed questioning from Councilmember Lander, he tried to deny a simple fact that has underscored more than 25 years of New York City homeless policy: that homeless families referred by the homeless services agency to the Federal housing programs’ waiting lists actually have the highest priority.

Indeed, even at the end of the questioning, Diamond STILL refused to acknowledge this simple fact, saying something about not knowing the answer. Well, in the interest of being helpful, the commissioner can easily find the answer in the annual plan of the New York City Housing Authority, which is created every year pursuant to Federal law – the whole document is here, and the relevant passages are:

Public Housing Waiting List (page 37): Highest Priority:

“1- Referrals from the New York City Department of Homeless Services or the HIV/AIDS Services Administration of the Administration for Children’s Services or the New York City Department or Housing Preservation and Development or the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.”

Section 8 Voucher Waiting List (page 41): Highest Priority:

“1 Referrals from the New York City Departments of Homeless Services.”

The bottom line: For a Mayor and an administration whose PR spin is that they craft their policies based on data and research, it’s obvious that, when it comes to homeless policy, nothing could be further from the truth.